Professor John Zarnecki told Newsweek that it seems unlikely an advanced civilization would travel vast distances only to deploy balloons over Earth.
"Suppose we receive the signal. We think about it and decide how to reply. Suppose that takes nine months, then we send back 'Fine, thank you very much,' and that takes another 4.25 years. So already that is 10 years and we have not got very far! And this all assumes we can find a common language."
In addition to lasers and radio signals, Shostak said that scientists are looking for more tangible signs of extraterrestrial life."One thing that we are doing more of, which I think is a good idea, is to look for alien artifacts—the universe has been around for 13 billion years; Earth has been around for 4 billion, so we're the new kids on the block.
"If you got on board our fastest rockets, those go about 10 miles a second," Shostak said."That's pretty fast [...] but even at that speed, to go to the nearest other star would take you 75,000 years. So, it's really difficult to go from one star system to another. [You would need] to have access to enormous amounts of energy, or have a lot of good books to read and be willing to sit on a rocket ship for a long time.
"Also, they would expect them to be detected surely—is this really the way they would want to announce themselves?"Handout/Getty
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